Lenny, The Chocolate Moose

The Maine Audubon offers daily guided canoe tours near Portland, Maine.  Since there are plenty of disc golf courses and other fun things to do in this area, we decided several days were necessary to see it all.

We arrived at Scarborough Marsh early with the thought that we could do some birding before the canoe tour started.  We were surprised to see that there was very little parking and not a lot of area to bird.

Scarborough Marsh is owned and managed by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.  It’s a 3,100 acre estuary and is the largest salt marsh in the state.

We thought about just renting kayaks (which we prefer over canoes) but decided to just go ahead and join the guided tour. 

Our guide started the tour with a 20 minute talk about the area.  It was pretty basic and was a little boring.  After everyone was fitted for a life jacket, we got in our canoe’s and headed out into the foggy marsh.

At $13 each we weren’t expecting a long tour but we were surprised when we were told it was time to turn back.  We really hadn’t been out very long.

We found a map of the canoe trails and hope to get back to this area to rent kayaks and explore the area on our own.

Across the street from the parking area was a short trail that went along a wetland.  We saw a few birds (certainly more than we had on the canoe trip) along the trail.

American Black Duck

Great Egret and Great Blue Heron

Common Tern

I had looked up attractions in this area and came across an interesting candy shop with a life size chocolate moose.  So we headed to Len Libby Candies and Gifts.

Lenny, the chocolate moose, has been standing in the same spot since July 1, 1997.  He is 1,700 pounds of milk chocolate.  He’s not solid.  There is a chicken wire frame under the chocolate.  The “pond” he is standing in is white chocolate tinted with blue food coloring.

I’m not sure when the bears were added but Mom (Libby - 380 pounds of solid dark chocolate) and the cubs (Cocoa and Chips - 80 pounds each of solid dark chocolate) were also there with Lenny.

There was a really good short movie being played showing Lenny being built.  We bought some ice cream and settled in to learn all about Lenny, the chocolate moose.

We had 3 1/2 days to spend in this area.  Mark had picked out disc golf courses he wanted to play and I had more tourist attractions lined up.

Eartha is the world’s largest rotating/revolving globe (according to Guinness Book of records).  It is housed in a three-story glass gallery at DeLorme (now Garmin) Headquarters.  Eartha was designed by CEO David DeLorme and completed in 1998.

It is just over 41 feet in diameter and was designed at a scale of 1:1,000,000 (one inch equals 16 miles).  California is 3 1/2 feet tall.

It is tilted at 23/5 degrees, just like Earth and is rotated by an electric motor.

A second motor swivels the entire tilted, rotating globe around the attachment point to the floor.  It takes about 18 minutes to complete a cycle.

We have seen a lot of “big” attractions in Maine.  I could probably write a whole blog just on big attractions we’ve seen.

Big F Indian is in Freeport.  There are several ideas on what the F stands for.  We’ll just say it stand for Freeport and leave it at that.

His official name is Chief Passamaquoddy.  He was built in 1969, stands 40 feet tall and weights 1,500 pounds.  He used to stand in front of the Casco Bay Trading Company but the trading company is long gone.   

The Fawcett’s Toy Museum was across the street from where we had lunch.  The weather was cloudy and misty so we decided to walk on over and take a look.  I don’t think we’ve ever been to a toy museum.  The area immediately inside the door has toys for sale and it’s free to walk around.  There is a fee to go into the museum (I don’t remember how much it was).  This place was packed with items.

There were a few things I recognized.

There was a lot to see.

This was a fun trip with lots of things to see.

1.2 million

One of our on-going projects has been to clean egg trays.  There are 200 egg trays holding about 1.2 million eggs.

One of two tray rooms.

In November some eggs will be taken from the brood stock here at the hatchery but most of the eggs raised here will be brought in from another hatchery close by.

By April the eggs have hatched into salmon fry and are ready to be moved to indoor tanks.  By that time the trays are pretty scummy.  Water is circulated through the trays to keep the scum from drying and hardening on the trays.  Once dried, the scum is very hard to remove.

When we would have an hour or two to spare we would tackle the on-going job of cleaning the trays.

Each column of trays has its own water supply that would need to be turned off and the water drained from the trays.

This is a very wet and messy job.

It was a good job for a warm, sunny day.  It would take a while to get everything set up before we could actually start power washing the trays.

The trays are very dirty.

There are three parts to the tray.  

The top screen keeps all the eggs in place.  Mark had to carefully power wash the screen so that it wasn't damaged.

The first inside tray is screened so that water can continuously circulate.  It is the tray that holds the eggs. 

The bottom part of the tray holds the water that is continuously circulated.  It’s the dirtiest part and has lots of crevices that are hard to clean.

The bottom gets cleaned inside and out.

 

This has been a great project to work on when we have extra time.  There wasn’t a big rush to get it completed.  When the days were warm we could take a couple of hours to clean a column or two of trays.

Say Cheese

On our days off this week we headed to Freeport for the 3rd annual Maine Cheese Festival.  Last month we went to the Machias Blueberry Festival and enjoyed it very much, so we were really looking forward to the cheese festival.

The web site stated that only 2000 tickets would be sold this year and it was recommended to pre-purchase tickets on line, which we did.  $15 per person seemed a little steep but they advertised over 30 Maine cheese makers would be there with plenty of samples and items to buy.

The festival opened at 11:00 and we arrived at 11:30. We were surprised to see that there was a long line of cars waiting to park.  In fact, it looked like there were about 2000 cars already parked.  We waited in line a while for a shuttle and finally decided to start walking.  We couldn’t tell how far to the entrance but a lot of people had given up on the shuttle and were walking.

As we approached the entrance we were told to get in a long line.  

After a while someone mentioned that if we had pre-paid we were in the wrong line!  We finally got to the correct entrance and were asked if we had pre-paid.  We said yes, no one questioned our answer or asked for proof, and we were handed a handy insulated bag.  We were told that there was only one per couple.  Hum … but we bought 2 tickets!

Our first stop was the Yum Bus for something to eat.  We waited in line for two small tacos ($6 each).  They were not very filling.

Next stop was for a scoop of ice cream.

We finally made it into the booth area only to see extreme long lines at each booth.  There was probably a 20-30 minute wait to get close enough to taste a sample and decided if we wanted to purchase their product.  The only booth that didn’t have a line, or any customers, was a woman selling spices.  She didn’t have any samples.   

There seemed to be a mad frenzy to grab as much free food as possible.  We walked around for a few minutes, decided that we had wasted $30, and left without sampling or purchasing any cheese.    

We checked into our hotel room and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing before heading out to dinner.

There are several disc golf courses in this area (Freeport, Augusta, Portland).  Mark has played a few of them this year but wanted to try a few more.

We spent a beautiful morning playing two 18-hole courses.

Downtown Freeport is very interesting.  It is one big outlet mall.  All the big names such as Coach, Calvin, Polo, etc. are there.  LL Bean has their flagship store.  In fact, there are many LL Bean stores.  Each has a different theme such as Home, Hunting, Biking, etc.  I wanted to see the famous “big shoe”.  After spending some time looking for a parking spot, we walked around a little before finding the big shoe.

No purchases were made until we found ourselves at Wicked Whoopies (gourmet whoopie pies).

We had one more disc golf course to play.

It rained all night and rain was predicted all the next day so we headed back home.

Even without cheese we had great disc golf and whoopie pies - what more can you ask for?

Pollinator Garden

When we arrived at the fish hatchery in mid-May the staff had a list of projects for us to tackle.  We like that!  We like to get organized and plan for the months ahead.

One of our projects was to put in a pollinator garden.  Even though “creating a pollinator garden” was on our original list of projects, there wasn’t a lot of helpful information such as size, types of plants, where exactly to put the garden, etc.  So, this project was talked about and discussed for a few weeks which put us into late June before we started it.

After all the basic questions were answered, the first step was to mark the boundaries.

We were not going to use weed mat under the plants because there are certain types of bees that burrow into the soil.  So, killing all the grass was necessary.

We probably picked the hottest day of the year to dig out all the dead grass.

We were told we had about a $350 budget that was money left over from the disbanded Friends group.  We found these beautiful quartz cobblestones at the local hardware store.  They cost almost half of our budget, but they are so pretty I really wanted to get them.  Mark did a great job getting them even.

We got out most of the dead grass and roots and raked it smooth.

Next up – and the fun part - buying the plants.  We went to a local garden center, grabbed a wagon and spent about 2 hours walking around to see what plants had the most bees on them.  Those were the plants we bought!

We did great purchasing enough perennials to fill the new bed.  We set them all out and started digging holes.

Everything got a good watering.

It looks great!  A heavy layer of mulch was added to keep the weeds out and moisture in.

It looks so good the staff wants 2-5 more identical beds.  A gift card was given to us by the Friends group of another fish hatchery.  Bed #2 is started.  I don’t know if we will have time this year to complete #2.  Beds 3-6 will be something to look forward to next year.

After a month the garden has really filled in.

We'll have our work cut out for us next year if we put in 4 more beds!

Teri

We Could Make A Horror Movie

Do you see it?

How about now?

We came back from a 4 day trip and Mark just happened to look up at the outside refrigerator vent. There looked to be a hornets nest taking over the RV!

This was a very busy nest. Lots of hornets going in and out. Mark sprayed it for a couple of days but we weren't seeing much less activity. Finally late one evening he pulled the nest off the outside of the RV. He was pretty sure there was a lot more inside the vent. After more hornet spray and seeing very little activity, it was time to take the vent off to see what nightmare was inside.

We don't know how long this nests had been in the works but it was big!

We've seen these kinds of nests before. The paper housing on the outside hides the hive inside.

Everything is cleaned up and back to normal. No hornets ever got inside of the RV.